How West Michigan hair is helping clean up Gulf Coast oil spill

Rex Larsen | The Grand Rapids PressStylist Mary Thompson, left, holds a half-days worth of hair collected from the floor of Design 1 Salon at 4485 Plainfield Ave. NE. At right, Sarah Mejeur gets a haircut from her sister-in-law, Lindsy Mejeur.The salon has collected hair for a week after learning it can be used to absorb oil spills.GRAND RAPIDS -- As soon as Design 1's Heidi Killingham heard the call for hair to make oil slick soppers, she signed up to donate bags and bags of shorn tresses.

"We've known about Matter of Trust," the San Francisco charity that put out the call, said Killingham, resource center manager for the salon at 4485 Plainfield Ave. NE.

"We sweep up everything with a hair vac, and put it all in a big bag."

The goal is to take advantage of hair's ridged texture that naturally absorbs oil to create sponges that can soak up the oil gushing from a damaged oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Matter of Trust group first started collecting hair 10 years ago, creating booms and mats made of hair to help deal with a series of small spills. It made a major push to clean up the Cosco Busan tanker spill in San Francisco in 2007.

As word spread nationally, the group had reached a "tipping point," increasing its network of donors to 90,000, from 35,000 over just three days, said Lisa Craig Gautier, who co-founded Matter of Trust with her husband, Patrice Olivier Gautier.

"It's truly just a surge of philanthropy," she said. "Everybody can get a haircut and donate."

As millions of gallons of oil float toward the Gulf Coast beaches, the California charity is rushing to collect wave upon wave of donated hair.

Design 1 sent its first shipment of clippings Monday, in the charity's "Wave 4" of donations.

"They're already up to Wave 7 because of how many other salons are signing up to donate," Killingham said.

Alabama hair stylist Phil McCrory was among the first to recognize the oil-sopping potential of human hair. He had his "aha" moment as he watched oil-soaked otters suffer in the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Why do people shampoo their hair? Because it collects oil, he reasoned.

McCrory developed a felted hair "mat." Then, 10 years ago, he joined with the Gautiers to create a national "natural fiber recycling" system. Matter of Trust is part of that effort.

Volunteers across the southeast United States are stuffing old, clean nylons with clean human or dog hair, then encasing each hair/nylon "sausage" in a plastic mesh, closing it with plastic zip-ties, and adding it to the growing mountain of oil soppers.

The emergency arose when a BP oil rig exploded and burned April 20. Two days later, it sank and the deep well began spewing crude from the ocean bottom.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the oil slick from the spill has been moving west toward richer fishing grounds in Louisiana and approaching Texas.

Word of the spreading devastation from the drilling rig explosion touched millions of Americans, but left few with a tangible way to help.

"It's a really amazing program," said Jeffrey Richard, who owns an Aveda salon at 1033 E. Fulton St. in the Eastown neighborhood. "Basically, they just want hair that doesn't have trash in with it."

Richard is one of the charity's newer philanthropists. When he heard about Matter of Trust, he quickly signed up and learned the charity had grown 400 percent -- overnight.

"It's so grass-roots, and so awesome, too, that everyone across the country, and the world, is donating," Richard said.

Auston Gross, who owns The Paw Shop, 3782 Chicago Drive SW in Grandville, heard about the cause on a message board she monitors for therapy dogs.

"We have so much dog hair we just throw away," Gross said. "We normally just put it outside for the birds."

Now, the layers of clean dog fur from Newfoundlands, German shepherds, and her own Greater Swiss Mountain Dog will be added to the collection.

"We have so much hair in the course of a week, it's way more than the birds would ever use," Gross said.

Salons and groomers are sending hair directly to 15 collection sites. Donors wait for e-mail directions before sending off the salvaged hair.

Amanda Richardson-Bacon, whose Clear Point, Ala., home is on Mobile Bay, came up with the idea to hold boom-construction parties with another volunteer from Mississippi.

She planned to train about 125 people, each of whom would then host Boom-B-Qs, a combination hair-sausage making effort, ending with a cook-out. How-to videos are on YouTube, through the matteroftrust.org website.

Richardson-Bacon said the process was simple: Stuff hair into nylons using PVC pipe and a broom or toilet plunger. Remove pipe, tie at top.

"It looks like a giant hair sausage," she said. "It's very nasty looking."

Donations wait until warehouse space is acquired. Lately, there's been a shortage of storage in Louisiana, according to the charity's Facebook page. The group attempts to spread out the storage zones across the Southeast, so more volunteers can reach them.

It is also researching ways to deal with the oil-soaked booms after their work is done. Options to date include slow composting with worms; mushrooms to digest the oil; and algae.